It can be used to create more energy than you put into it... not sure what other devices have that characteristic...

Looking back up in this thread, I'll assume you refer to this part in Wikipedia:

« If allowed to accelerate horizontally on a frictionless plane, the kinetic energy would grow as the square of the elapsed time, while the input energy grows linearly with time. Thus, after a characteristic time T, "free" energy would appear to be continuously available in ever-increasing amounts. Appeal is made by Woodward to the rest of the universe for making up the energy imbalance. »

As far as the many laws of physics it contradicts, you're just saying that but you don't give any actual argument and ignore those that are given to you.

The fact that it's a perpetual motion machine, contradicts ALL the laws of physics!

Could be worse. Could cause paradoxes like FTL.

All this was discussed in the other thread. (I posted a link earlier) What I would be most interested to hear is if anyone can argue against RobotBeat's claim, i.e. show that Woodwards effect actually has some explaining power. It is really about "is this a good explanation for inertia" isnt it? What is there about this theory that is more elegant than what we already have?

What is there about this theory that is more elegant than what we already have?

I don't think there is any explanation for inertia in the current laws of physics. In general relativity, mass bends space-time but space-time preexists to mass. By this I mean that even in an empty universe, we think there are still reference frames that are inertial and others that are not. But we're not sure. That's why we don't know if Mach's principle is true or not.

It clearly violates local conservation of momentum in any practical, testable sense.

Studying electronics I learned to use imaginary numbers in what is to my way of thinking a "non-obvious" way. I use this knowledge in a very practical manner although I will be the first to admit I cannot explain the theory. Einstein famously said that imagination is more important than knowledge so again I ask you, "define real".

If he does, what will you then do? Two possibilities, but the same question:

If you do not accept his definition, what would you then prove?

If you do accept his definition, what would you then prove?

On the face of it, the reported theory violates the conservation of momentum.

Not at all clear how the explanation of the theory is made by having this "definition" of what is "real".

On the face of it, the reported theory violates the conservation of momentum.

Maybe the engine that he describes would (pulling and pushing an oscillating mass). He might have made a mistake when modeling the dynamics of such a system.

But the effect by itself (the variation of mass) does not violate the conservation of momentum. Momentum is conserved if you consider all masses in the universe. Just like a comet falling towards the Sun does not violate momentum conservation. It gains momentum due to an interaction with a gravitational field.

I don't think there is any explanation for inertia in the current laws of physics. In general relativity, mass bends space-time but space-time preexists to mass. By this I mean that even in an empty universe, we think there are still reference frames that are inertial and others that are not. But we're not sure. That's why we don't know if Mach's principle is true or not.

That's my understanding as well.

AIUI, Mach's hypothesis is that inertia results from local mass interacting with the total mass of the universe. I don't know how that hypothesis could be tested and verified.

The factproposal that it's a perpetual motion machine, contradicts ALL the laws of physics!

Fixed that for ya. 'Cause it ain't no fact. 'Cause it don't exist. But hey.

Personally, I'm ignoring the energy gains alleged for the "optimized" device as speculated about by Woodward and others.

I am still trying, without suggesting that I have been working the problem 24/7/365, to understand the math which is said to demonstrate Woodward and Sciama's interpretation of inertia. With this understanding, I hope then to understand how the "flux capacitor" works.

On the face of it, the reported theory violates the conservation of momentum.

Maybe the engine that he describes would (pulling and pushing an oscillating mass). He might have made a mistake when modeling the dynamics of such a system.

But the effect by itself (the variation of mass) does not violate the conservation of momentum. Momentum is conserved if you consider all masses in the universe. Just like a comet falling towards the Sun does not violate momentum conservation. It gains momentum due to an interaction with a gravitational field.

That's what nobody seems to understand. Did he make a mistake?

And if you do consider all the masses in the universe, something else somewhere else is moving, once this device gets going. I like to joke that I stamp my feet in this room, and some Arcturian's coffee develops ripples.

I don't know. You'll notice I started this thread with questions regarding his maths.

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And if you do consider all the masses in the universe, something else somewhere else is moving, once this device gets going. I like to joke that I stamp my feet in this room, and some Arcturian's coffee develops ripples.

Ever since I read Feynman's short book "strange theory of light and matter", where iirc he describes his absorber theory with advanced electromagnetic waves, I'm not surprised by this kind of stuff anymore.

From the Propellantless thread, which is just too friggin' long, I repost a few things, for the general convenience.

If I had written the software for this site, it would paginate well; but I didn't and it doesn't. Use the "Print" function to find the pieces I repost.

Sometimes, the search function works, and you get a linkable quote. Just offering some backup reading for the convenience of posters in this thread. No particular order.

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Post by: Star-Drive on August 08, 2009, 11:52:48 AM

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From Dr. James F. Woodward, August 08, 2009

"The issue of whether Mach's principle is contained in 1915 GR depends on how the principle is defined and whether or not one requires that initial/boundary conditions are considered part of the theory. If all that GR is considered to be is the field equations, then one can make statements like that your correspondent makes. It is now well-known, if not as widely appreciated as it should be, though, that Mach's principle -- which is one of Einstein's formative principles in creating GR -- is contained in 1915 GR. That is, no modification of the 1915 field equations is required to encompass Mach's principle. What is required is the stipulation of suitable boundary and/or initial conditions for it to be shown explicitly that the inertia of local objects is caused by the distribution of chiefly distant matter. Derek Raine did this explicitly in his doctoral work for Dennis Sciama back in the mid-'70s.

The reason why this has not become textbook stuff (and your correspondent can make the sort of statements he does without looking like a complete jackass) is that while Mach's principle is part of 1915 GR with boundary/initial conditions that correspond to the universe as we see it, it comes with a price. Either one must accept that, at least as far as inertia is concerned, GR is an "action at a distance" interaction (to account for the instantaneity of inertial reaction forces) -- see Hoyle and Narlikar's book Action at a Distance in Physics and Cosmology (Freeman, 1974) -- or inertial effects must be considered to be contained in the "constraint" equations on initial data (which are elliptic, rather than hyperbolic, and "propagate" instantaneously as a result) -- see Ciufolini and Wheeler, Gravitation and Inertia (Princeton, 1995).

Wheeler hardly mentions Raine at all -- presumably because Raine didn't include the energies associated with gravity waves in his analysis -- and perhaps because Wheeler, despite being an early advocate (with Feynman) of action at a distance electrodynamics, seems to have regarded action at a distance as a serious theoretical consideration as silly.

Actually, of course, who believes what, and why, is irrelevant as far as the physical reality of Mach effects is concerned. The ONLY relevant question is: are inertial reaction forces produced by the gravitational action of chiefly distant matter (in GR or any other theory you happen to choose to believe in)? The answer to this question is clear. They are.

This was shown by Sciama decades ago. And the same result can be demonstrated for GR conditions using Nordtvedt's formulation of the PPN formalism for linear accelerative frame dragging. Once you have accepted the fact that inertial forces are produced by the gravitational action of chiefly distant matter, then the rest of the derivation of transient Mach effects follows inexorably. Whether your corresponded chooses to understand and appreciate this is irrelevant to the facts of the nature of reality. Science, ultimately, is not a beauty contest determined by fashion or wishful thinking. Experiments, not the opinions of others, will eventually decide the issues involved.

I suggest that you not waste your time on trying to convince others to take Mach's principle Mach effects seriously. People get silly theoretical fixations, and it is impossible to get them to abandon them.

As Planck once said, his critics didn't change their minds. They died. Building something that works is the only thing that warrants serious attention."

That last sentence is interesting, especially in light of the fact that no such working device has yet been publicly revealed. That it is interesting is not to say that it is revealing.

Post by: Star-Drive on May 14, 2010, 11:30:05 AM [Addressing moi, who had just oberved that I don't think that inertia is understood just yet.]

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John:

Now that depends on who you ask. Dennis Sciama, (Graduate student of Paul Dirac and Graduate Advisor to Steve Hawking amoung other stellar Physics folks from the 1960s, 70s and 80s), provided a very good explanation for the origins of inertia based on Mach's Priniciple and GRT. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_William_Sciama and Sciama's graduate paper on same.) This is where Woodward started his quest for a better rocket via the Mach-Effect as revealed in its extendions to Newton's thrid law.

And yes, the QM types have tried to make their Quantum Vacuum Fluctuations be the origins of inertia, (See Hal Puthoff & crew's work on same), but their arguments to date IMO don't stand up to Sciama's and the rest of the GRT folk's origins of-inertia theory. Your opinion may differ, so we really need to be doing experiments instead of brushing this inertia issue under the rug.

Just clarifying that I am not brushing anything under the rug, yet neither is Star Drive providing me with an explanation of inertia. I'm happy for experimentation to take place, tho I do not necessarily want to fund it myself.

I have read some of Sciama's work. We're familiar with Einstein's thought experiment of dropping a ball in the cab of an elevator, which seems to indicate that one can't differentiate between acceleration or gravitational attraction. Sciama suggests dropping two balls. In an accelerating frame, the balls would move parallel to one another. In a gravitational frame, the balls would tend to converge to the center of gravity of the nearby body. This struck me as a good experiment to differentiate between the two types of acceleration.[/JF]

Even so, and I can't find it, there is another explanation of why the two balls converge.

I have slogged thru Ciufolini & Wheeler in its entirety. ... They, C&W, assert instantaneous action at a distance as a precept of Mach's principle: "Inertia here arises from mass there".

One thing I don't get is how they can draw conclusions about inertial frame dragging, while admitting that there is a good deal of "missing" mass in the universe. ... Their math, of course, is impenetrable to me in large part, but their descriptive speculations and conclusions are illuminating. Section 4.8 Cosmology and Origin of Inertia is a good example.

C&W admit, "with regard to the origin of inertia, we try to do the same in this section (and in this book): to determine and distinguish among some formulations and interpretations of the origin of inertia in Einstein geometrodynamics, in other metric theories, and in classical mechanics, and come up with experiments that might test these different interpretations". Italics theirs.

True, C&W get a mite poetic here and there: Page 274. "Adopting this language, we can declare that spacetime and inertia here do not see mass-energy there; they feel it". The language they're adopting is that of Sciama and Ellis: "the Coulomb field of a charged particle that lies outside of our particle horizon is still inprinciple detectable today. We can express this situation by saying that although we cannot see acharge outside of our light cone, we can certainly feel it". As I put it; if I stomp on the planet right now, the beings on Arcturus will feel it immediately, at least in principle. In the documentary film "A New Hope", the scientist Alec Guinness points out that he has "felt a major disturbance in the Force".

There is some other mass-energy force out there and it is a huge component of the whole; I continue to struggle with understanding it beyond my math abilities. The rest of the universe outside of our light cone can simply not cease to exist without there being some effect here; not only that, but there are "things", like planets, for example, out there which we cannot see. I guess. I think that the prop-less propulsion folk believe that they have found some demonstrable evidence of this force.

Edited out a bit of snark, but a good book is C&W "Gravitation and Inertia". Also Sciama's "Foundations of General Relativity".

(Submitted on 10 Jun 2010 (v1), last revised 15 Jun 2010 (this version, v2))Abstract: We show that in complete agreement with classical mechanics, the dynamics of any quantum mechanical wave packet in a linear gravitational potential involves the gravitational and the inertial mass only as their ratio. In contrast, the spatial modulation of the corresponding energy wave function is determined by the third root of the product of the two masses. Moreover, the discrete energy spectrum of a particle constrained in its motion by a linear gravitational potential and an infinitely steep wall depends on the inertial as well as the gravitational mass with different fractional powers. This feature might open a new avenue in quantum tests of the universality of free fall."

"Lastly; although you have given many buzzwords; you have not actually made it clear why the mach effect would have any effects on a scale smaller than some lightyears. Try to explain in one paragraph."

I did but you didn't seem to notice. It's called Newtonian inerital reaction forces and the predicted transient M-E forces that surrounds them. As to the buzzwords, you might take the time to read the comments and the references already provided in this thread, but I'll make it easy for you and append one of the more important papers and a teaser as well.

I'll try to paint a picture of the M-E and rockets that you can relate to, but this stuff is not easy to navigate through so bear with me.

BTW, until we have an experimentally verified quantum-gravity theory that merges QM and GRT into a harmonious whole, we have no clue whether "gravitons" or the quantification of gravity into particles exist or does not. So the GRT community talks about spacetime distortion waves being the seat of all gravitational and inertial phenomenon's instead. In fact, Woodward claims that Newtonian inertial reaction forces are the only TRUE force of gravity! Local gravitational disturbances, like the gee-field of the Earth, are just minor local spacetime distortions…

Woodward’s transient Mach-Effect (M-E) conjecture is inextricably tied to his proposed origins of inertia theory based on Newton's three laws of motion, Mach’s Principle, Special and General Relativity Theories (SRT & GRT), Lorentz Invariance, with the latter requirement guarantying that the resulting conjecture observes all known conservation laws, along with Dennis Sciama’s 1953 and 1969 origins of inertia papers. The strength of Woodward’s arguments relies on the strength of these underlying assumptions, which have yet to be disproven in or out of the labs. Also note that since we are talking about using a hidden attribute of regular Newtonian inertial reaction forces instead of gravity effects to create the M-E, the magnitude of these predicted M-E transient inertial forces are in line with everyday inertial reaction forces that can be very large dependent on the magnitude of the applied acceleration, instead of the pico-picoscopic forces described by gravity effects or GRT predicted gravity waves due to the ~1x10^40 measured difference in gravity verses inertial derived effects. One may legitimately then ask why does this huge difference in magnitude exist between spacetime distortions derived effects such as gravity and inertia? It results from the fact that the gravitational forces are created by spacetime distortions created by local mass/energy concentrations only, whereas inertial forces are created by the interactions of all the causally connected mass/energy in the universe which is currently pegged as having a radius of 13.7 billion light years.

Now why did I provide all of the foregoing when talking about the difference between the M-E based thrusters and rockets? First off the reader has to remember that the rocket and its propellant form a small CLOSED-loop system. It has NO pertinent interactions with the outside universe as far as its maximum delta-V generation capability is concerned. This closed system restriction limits a rocket vehicle’s maximum obtainable delta-V to the total amount of onboard propellant and the amount of useable energy that is stored in the vehicle’s propellant or reactors be it chemical or nuclear derived. This local onboard energy and propellant limitation IS the origins of the Tyranny of the rocket equation!

An M-E based thruster on the other hand is a much larger closed-loop propulsion system that can react with ALL the mass/energy in the causally connected universe that participates in the creation of the local acceleration induced inertial forces. (See Sciama’s and Woodward’s “Origins of Inertia” papers.) So an M-E based thruster not only uses this cosmologically derived mass/energy reaction force for most of its equivalent reaction mass, (It also has to have a minimum recyclable amount of local mass that will allow it to react with the gravinertial (G/I) field, just like a submarine has to have a propeller to react with the ocean’s waters.) However, it also can extract energy and momentum from this near infinite sea of G/I mass/energy field and convert it into the local kinetic energy of the locally accelerated M-E powered vehicle above and beyond what the vehicle’s local power supply can provide. However it can do this only if a G/I pressure differential of the proper sign can be established across the M-E device’s dielectric “propeller”.

Ok, so why did I evoke Einstein’s e=m*c^2 energy/mass equivalency in my previous comments? Simply because of Einstein’s GRT based equivalence principle or EEP that states that there can be no measureable difference between gravitational and inertial mass when measured in the same local frame of reference. The EEP therefore requires that acceleration measured inertial mass has to have the same value as gravitationally measured mass in the same frame of reference, which is defined by Einstein’s mass/energy equivalency equation of m= e/c^2. This implies that the G/I field phi, which has a theoretical value equal to c^2, is created by the summation of ALL of the mass/energy created spacetime distortions in the causally connected universe. Therefore given the cosmologically derived estimates of the mass/energy contained in the causally connected universe that is ~13.7 billion light years in radius, which is measured to be 9.1x10^-27 kg/m^3 in mass density terms, times the total volume of the cosmos, and converting that figure back to energy gives us an upper bound for the available energy that any M-E device can tap. Another way to estimate the magnitude of this upper energy storage bound of the causally connected universe can be estimated by noting that there are ~1x10^80 atoms in this cosmos, plus the associated dark matter and dark energy that goes with it and then converting that figure into energy and adding them all up. So the theoretical G/I field energy so extracted by an M-E device is therefore near infinite and not limited by its local energy resources stored in the vehicle even if it’s nuclear power derived. It is only limited by the power handling and phase control capabilities of the M-E device‘s components and its overall efficiency at pumping G/I field energy from this cosmological energy resource to the local vehicle or power plant in question. How much energy that can be extracted from the G/I field by any one M-E device will ultimately be determined by the maximum operational G/I pressure differential that can be established across any given M-E device.

Chris Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

There's quite a few versions of Mach's principle out there, some of which are incompatible with GR (like the relationist version). The one Woodward's talking about is based on Sciama's model of inertia. Derek Raine showed in this paper that Sciama's account of inertia is true in GR for all isotropic cosmologies (universes like ours). Those are the "boundary conditions" Woodward is talking about in the quote above.

Again, it seems more like Woodward is trying to fit the universe to do what he wants it to do instead of trying to figure out how it /actually/ works and only then exploiting it.

Logged

Chris Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0